W.H. aims to build on site numbers

No question, the website’s performance on Wednesday again gave the Obama administration another reason for optimism. The site remained stable for a third day and under “strong demand,” officials reported, and an early tally of new enrollments showed that 29,000 people had signed up within 48 hours — a figure that exceeded the total enrolled through the federal portal in all of October.

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Between midnight and noon Wednesday, the site again drew more than 310,000 visits, more than 80 percent higher than traffic last week, officials said.

The sharply higher volume and enrollment surge follow a round-the-clock effort by a federal tech team and contractors to complete more than 400 software fixes and hardware upgrades since the site’s disastrous Oct. 1 launch. Its operation this week has given some early tailwinds to the administration’s effort to turn around the conversation on both the website and Obamacare as a whole.

The White House and supporters are hoping for continuing signs of momentum on Thursday and for the rest of the month.

“I think the Affordable Care Act and especially the website problems have turned a corner in a very significant way,” said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA. “I don’t want anyone to assume that there won’t be some and possibly unpredicted glitches that may occur. They are inevitable. … However, I think that static about the Affordable Care Act is much behind us.”

Yet the GOP is largely ignoring the improved numbers, which follow the administration’s self-imposed Nov. 30 deadline to get the website running smoothly. Republicans instead have kicked off a counter-campaign with renewed hearings on the Affordable Care Act.

GOP members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee targeted the site’s disastrous launch on Wednesday, while the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee picked at Obamacare’s other wounds.

Subcommittee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) challenged the administration’s effort to reset public opinion, saying the health law’s troubles run much deeper than a flawed website. For the most part, the GOP has let HealthCare.gov’s problems speak for themselves and tried to focus attention on parallel issues, including plan cancellations, narrower provider networks and the one-year delays of both the employer mandate and enrollment in the federal online small business exchange.

The Obama administration’s attempt to rehabilitate the law after the botched launch is “a strange use of resources given that the problems are with the policy, not the politics, and what’s needed are real solutions, not more spin,” Brady said. “The Affordable Care Act’s fundamental problems can’t be fixed with better marketing. The flaw is not the website, the flaw is the law itself.”

House Speaker John Boehner again raised the specter of delay and repeal Wednesday. Faulting the Senate for not taking up some 150 bills passed by the House – an apparent rejoinder to the criticisms of how little this Congress has accomplished legislatively – he singled out a couple of Obamacare bills, including one to “just scrap the health care law that is wreaking havoc on our economy.”

Despite the apparent turnaround of the consumer experience on the federal website, enrolling on HealthCare.gov is not the same as people actually being covered by insurance policies. For the latter to happen, HealthCare.gov must tell insurers who has signed up, and the consumers must pay their first premium.

Insurance industry officials on Wednesday warned state legislators in town for their annual legislative conference that persistent issues with the “834” enrollment files could threaten their constituents’ coverage if inaccuracies and duplications aren’t fixed before Jan. 1.

“The back-end issues remain not resolved, and consumers’ coverage will be disrupted,” Mark Pratt, a senior vice president with America’s Health Insurance Plans, told the National Conference of State Legislatures meeting.

Industry officials said they’re working closely with Health and Human Services to fix the issues, but they couldn’t predict when they would be resolved.